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[iPickle]

CAUTION - Seeking Alpha is a free for all of investing advice, opinion, and “knowledge” that you should view with extreme caution.

Many of the authors on the financial blogging site are college students trying to make an extra buck. What do they know that you should listen to when researching a stock? Probably not much. And yet given the platform the Internet provides, they are able to come across as authorities – unless you are aware that they aren’t and that is why I am writing this warning.

Seeking Alpha pays writers 1 cent per click and sometimes more which provides the incentive for articles to be written with catchy and sometimes controversial titles. Never mind whether they are accurate (most are heavy on opinions anyway), the idea is to get people clicking and reading so that the authors can get paid more.

Every author is supposed to give a short blurb about their investing style and the stocks they are long or short. This would supposedly give the reader some useful background but the problem is, none of it is checked or verified. Anything and everything you read on Seeking Alpha can be made up!

The more time you spend on the site, the clearer it is that some authors have an agenda